


Mr. Misty-eyed

by bbluejoseph



Series: CANYOUSAVE [7]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Anxiety, M/M, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, this is barely joshler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbluejoseph/pseuds/bbluejoseph
Summary: Again, gripped with desperation, Tyler thinks of the rabbit in the trap.
Relationships: Josh Dun/Tyler Joseph
Series: CANYOUSAVE [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1384165
Kudos: 10





	Mr. Misty-eyed

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this quite some time ago, not really sure if I was going to share it, but now is definitely the time

The fabric of the chair is rough like carpet. It’s a dark blue color, something that should be soothing, but it’s in quite the wrong place. Like a rabbit in a wolves’ den.

Tyler likens his heart to a rabbit, sometimes. He compares his love to the flighty, nervous demeanor of the rabbit, something shy but eager in the swiftness of its paws, the sharpness of its ears. 

Today his heart is a rabbit in the bad way. His heartbeat is quick and rapid, and his breaths nearly absent. His body is reluctant to breathe; it ignores its own basic needs, and he has to take over, but he keeps forgetting, and it is hard, so hard, just to inhale. 

He is desperate to be somewhere else, to race from the room with no restraints, no consequences. 

Tyler does, in his dreams. In his dreams, he grows wings like a bird and flies through the air, rapid, frantic, but free. Arms reach out, fingers brush his feathers, but he cannot be caught, and he soars away. 

This is not his dreams. This is the doctor’s office. Tyler hates the doctor’s office. 

Every medical appointment, in general, is agonizing for him. He feels sick for days beforehand, a desperation growing within that frightens him. A rabbit with its foot in a trap, gnawing off its own leg to get away. Tyler understands this. 

Sitting in the waiting room might be the worst. He can’t kick his feet or play with his sleeves, or move at all, because it isn’t allowed. Tyler knows most people wouldn’t notice or care. It is his own shame that keeps him in place.

His eyes move, instead, like a rabbit’s, flicking from one place to another because he doesn’t want to stare at one spot for too long. He is ashamed to stare, but there isn't much to look at here. Some charts on the wall. A magazine on the little table by the door. Josh, in the chair next to him. 

Josh. Josh gets nervous before appointments, too, but more of a general awkwardness, less of a full-out agony. Tyler doesn’t want to tell him how bad it gets for him because he doesn’t want him to feel like his problems aren't important.

Josh is looking at something on his phone to pass the time. Tyler’s phone is in his pocket, but he’s too anxious to play any of the bright, mindless games there, and he can’t focus enough to read anything. 

Tyler tries to remember what Josh promised him when he made the appointment. “We can get pizza after,” he’d promised, writing the date and time on the calendar in the kitchen. Tyler feels too sick for pizza. He hates the doctor’s.

The doctor will talk to him, and Tyler will be expected to talk back. He hates the little tests the doctor gives him to make sure he’s healthy, because he is so sure he will fail. And certainly, once the appointment reaches its end, Tyler will forget to say something important, or tune out on instructions, or be so desperate to leave that he’ll practically run back to the waiting room.

Josh puts a hand on Tyler’s knee, making him jump. “You’re clenching your hands on the seat,” he says, which is true. Tyler lets go. 

“Are you alright?” Josh asks, and Tyler nods because there isn’t anything Josh can do. He’ll flee the appointment once it has ended, take several hours to try to reprogram his brain, remove the shakiness from his limbs. But none of that can be carried out until it is over. 

He is ashamed to be so anxious. He is ashamed that he can’t take these appointments like the people around him can. He is ashamed that Josh had to make the appointment for him. Talking on the phone, like everything else, makes him sick.

Again, gripped with desperation, Tyler thinks of the rabbit in the trap. Gnawing off his leg wouldn’t get him out of here. There is no sacrifice he could make to escape. No sacrifice that is allowed. 

The door to the doctor’s office clicks open, sending panic straight through his heart. The nurse is standing there with a clipboard, glancing at the name before reading it aloud. “Tyler?”

Josh squeezes his hand. Tyler stands, shakily, and follows the nurse.


End file.
